On Secret Service Part 23

"No, and you probably wouldn't for some time," Elmer retorted. "But it happens that I saw it disappear."

"Then you know where it is?"

"I can lay my hands on it--and probably the rest of the missing money--inside of one minute. Let's pay a visit to the registry room."

Before entering the section, however, Allison took the precaution of posting men at both of the doors.

"After I'm inside," he directed, "don't allow anyone to leave on any pretext whatever. And stand ready for trouble in case it develops. Come on, Mr. Rogers."

Once in the room devoted to the handling of registered mail, Allison made directly for the desk under the lookout. The occupant regarded their approach with interest but, apparently, without a trace of anxiety.

"I'd like to have that letter supposed to contain thirty-five thousand dollars which you dropped on the floor a few moments ago," Elmer remarked in a quiet, almost conversational tone.

Except for a sudden start, the clerk appeared the picture of innocence.

"What letter?" he parried.

"You know what one!" snapped Allison, dropping his suave manner and moving his hand significantly toward his coat pocket. "Will you produce it--or shall I?"

"I--I don't know what you are talking about," stammered the clerk.

"No? Well, I'll show you!" and the operative's hands flashed forward and there was a slight click as a pair of handcuffs snapped into place.

"Now, Mr. Rogers, you'll be good enough to watch me carefully, as your evidence will probably be needed in court. I'll show you as simple and clever a scheme as I've ever run across."

With that Allison dropped to the floor, wormed his way under the table-desk, tugged at something for a moment and then rose, holding five large envelopes in his hands!

"There's your lost one hundred thousand dollars," he explained, "and a dummy packet of thirty-five thousand dollars to boot. Thought you could get away with it indefinitely, eh?" he inquired of the handcuffed clerk.

"If you'd stopped with the one hundred thousand dollars, as you'd probably intended to do, you might have. But that extra letter turned the trick. Too bad it contained only blank paper"--and he ripped the envelope open to prove his a.s.sertion.

"But--but--I don't understand," faltered Rogers. "How did this man work it right under our eyes?"

"He didn't," declared Allison. "He tried to work it right under mine, but he couldn't get away with it. The plan was simplicity itself. He'd slip an envelope which he knew contained a large sum of money out of the pile as it pa.s.sed him--he hadn't signed for them, so he wasn't taking any special risk--drop it on the floor, stoop over, and, if he wasn't being watched, attach it to the _bottom_ of his desk with a wad of chewing gum. You boasted that you went over the room with a fine-tooth comb, but who would think of looking on the under side of this table.

The idea, of course, was that he'd wait for the storm to blow over--because the letters could remain in their hiding places for months, if necessary--and then start on a lifelong vacation with his spoils as capital. But he made the error of overcapitalization and I very much fear that he'll put in at least ten years at Leavenworth or Morgantown. But I'd like to bet he never chews another piece of gum!"

"That," continued Quinn, as he tossed another pink wrapper into the wastebasket, "I consider the simplest and cleverest scheme to beat the government that I ever heard of--better even than Cochrane's plan in connection with the robbery of the Philadelphia mint, because it didn't necessitate any outside preparation at all. The right job, a piece of gum, and there you are. But you may be sure that whenever an important letter disappears nowadays, one of the first places searched by the Postal Inspection operatives is the lower side of the desks and tables.

You can't get away with a trick twice in the same place."

XII

"THE DOUBLE CODE"

It was one night in early fall that Bill Quinn and I were browsing around the library in the house that he had called "home" ever since a counterfeiter's bullet incapacitated him from further active work in the Secret Service. Prior to that time he had lived, as he put it, "wherever he hung his hat," but now there was a comfortable little house with a den where Quinn kept the more unusual, and often gruesome, relics which brought back memories of the past.

There, hanging on the wall with a dark-brown stain still adorning the razorlike edge, was a Chinese hatchet which had doubtless figured in some tong war on the Coast. Below was an ordinary twenty-five-cent piece, attached to the wall paper with chewing gum--"just as it once aided in robbing the Treasury of nearly a million dollars," Quinn a.s.sured me. In another part of the room was a frame containing what appeared to be a bit torn from the wrapping of a package, with the canceled stamp and a half-obliterated postmark as the only clues to the murder of the man who had received it, and, beside the bookcases, which contained a wide range of detective literature, hung a larger frame in which were the finger prints of more than a score of criminals, men bearing names practically unknown to the public, but whose exploits were bywords in the various governmental detective services.

It was while glancing over the contents of the bookcase that I noted one volume which appeared strangely out of place in this collection of the fictional romances of crime.

"What's this doing here?" I inquired, taking down a volume of _The Giant Raft_, by Jules Verne. "Verne didn't write detective stories, did he?"

"No," replied Quinn, "and it's really out of place in the bookcase. If possible, I'd like to have it framed and put on the wall with the rest of the relics--for it's really more important than any of them, from the standpoint of value to the nation. That quarter on the wall over there--the one which figured in the Sugar Fraud case--cost the government in the neighborhood of a million dollars, but this book probably saved a score of millions and hundreds of lives as well. If it hadn't been for the fact that Thurber of the Navy Department knew his Jules Vernes even better than he did his Bible, it's quite possible that--

"Well, there's no use telling the end of the story before the beginning.

Make yourself comfortable and I'll see if I can recall the details of the case."

Remember Dr. Heinrich Albert? [Quinn inquired, after we had both stretched out in front of the open fire]. Theoretically, the Herr Doktor was attached to the German emba.s.sy in Washington merely in an advisory and financial capacity. He and Haniel von Heimhausen--the same counselor that the present German government wanted to send over here as amba.s.sador after the signing of the peace treaty--were charged with the solution of many of the legal difficulties which arose in connection with the business of the big red brick dwelling on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue.

But while von Heimhausen was occupied with the legal end of the game, Doctor Albert attended to many of the underground details which went unsuspected for many years.

It was he, for example, who managed the bidding for the wireless station in the Philippines--the plan which permitted the German government to dictate the location of the station and to see to it that the towers were so placed where they would be most useful to Berlin. He undoubtedly worked with von Papen and Boy-Ed during the early years of the war--years in which this precious trio, either with or without the knowledge of Count von Bernstorff, sought by every means to cripple American shipping, violate American neutrality, and make a laughingstock of American diplomatic methods. What's more, they got away with it for months, not because the Secret Service and the Department of Justice weren't hot on their trail, but because the Germans were too cagy to be caught and you can't arrest a diplomat just on suspicion.

During the months which followed the first of August, nineteen fourteen, practically every one of the government's detective services was called upon in some way to pry into the affairs of the emba.s.sy staff. But the brunt of the work naturally devolved upon the two organizations directly concerned with preventing flagrant breaches of neutrality--the Secret Service and the Department of Justice.

Every time that Doctor Albert, or any other official of the German government, left Washington he was trailed by anywhere from one to five men. Every move he made was noted and reported to headquarters, with the result that the State Department had a very good idea of the names of the men who were being used to forward Germany's ends, even though it knew comparatively little about what was actually planned. The attaches were entirely too clever to carry on compromising conversations in the open, and their appointments were made in such a manner as effectually to prevent the planting of a dictaphone or any other device by which they might be overheard.

The directions to the men who were responsible for the working of the two Services were:

Every attache of the German emba.s.sy is to be guarded with extreme care, day and night. Reports are to be made through the usual channels and, in the event that something unusual is observed, Divisional Headquarters is to be notified instantly, the information being transmitted to Washington before any final action is taken.

This last clause, of course, was inserted to prevent some hot-headed operative from going off half-c.o.c.ked and thus spoiling the State Department's plans. As long as Albert and his a.s.sociates were merely "guarded" they couldn't enter any formal complaint. But, given half a chance, they would have gotten on their official dignity and demanded that the espionage cease.

From the State Department's point of view it was an excellent rule, but Gene Barlow and the other Service men a.s.signed to follow Albert couldn't see it in that light.

"What's the idea, anyhow?" Gene growled one night as his pet taxicab dashed down Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue in the wake of the big touring car that was carrying the German attache to the Union Station. "Here we have to be on the job at all hours, just to watch this Dutchman and see what he does. And," with a note of contempt, "he never does anything worth reporting. Sees half a dozen people, lunches at the German-American Club, drops in at two or three offices downtown, and then back here again. If they'd only let us waylay him and get hold of that black bag that he always carts around there'd be nothing to it. Some day I'm going to do that little thing, just to see what happens."

But Barlow took it out in threats. Secret Service men find pleasure in stating what they are going to do "some day"--but the quality of implicit obedience has been drilled into them too thoroughly for them to forget it, which is possibly the reason why they take such a sheer and genuine delight in going ahead when the restrictions are finally lifted.

It was in New York, more than two years after the war had commenced, that Barlow got his first opportunity to "see what would happen." In the meantime, he had been a.s.signed to half a dozen other cases, but always returned to the shadowing of Doctor Albert because he was the one man who had been eminently successful in that work. The German had an almost uncanny habit of throwing his pursuers off the trail whenever he wanted to and in spite of the efforts of the cleverest men in the Service had disappeared from time to time. The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the delicacy of the diplomatic situation which ensued made it imperative that the "man with the saber scar," as Doctor Albert was known, be kept constantly under surveillance.

"Stick to him, Gene, and don't bother about reporting until you are certain that he will stay put long enough for you to phone," were the instructions that Barlow received. "The doctor must be watched every moment that he's away from the Emba.s.sy and it's up to you to do it."

"Anything else beside watching him?" inquired the operative, hopefully.

"No," smiled the chief, "there isn't to be any rough stuff. We're on the verge of an explosion as it is, and anyone who pulls the hair trigger will not only find himself out of a job, but will have the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that he's responsible for wrecking some very carefully laid plans. Where Albert goes, who he talks with and, if possible, a few details of what they discuss, is all that's wanted."

"Wouldn't like to have a piece of the Kaiser's mustache or anything of that kind, would you, Chief?" Barlow retorted. "I could get that for you a whole lot easier than I could find out what the man with the saber scar talks about. He's the original George B. Careful. Never was known to take a chance. Wouldn't bet a nickel against a hundred dollars that the sun would come up to-morrow and always sees to it that his conferences are held behind bolted doors. They even pull down the shades so that no lip reader with a pair of field gla.s.ses can get a tip as to what they're talking about."

"That's the reason you were picked for this case," was the chief's reply. "Any strong-arm man could whale Albert over the head and throw him in the river. That wouldn't help any. What we need is information concerning what his plans are, and it takes a clever man to get that."

"All bull and a yard wide!" laughed Gene, but the compliment pleased him, nevertheless. "I'll watch him, but let me know when the lid comes off and I can use other methods."

The chief promised that he would--and it was not more than three weeks later that he had an opportunity to make good.